


we are fated to grow old

by waterfront



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M, from Scott's perspective, going through the end of season 1 to post season 3, its not that long i swear, scott fuller does not get the love he deserves, watching him grow from an angry teenager to a peaceful young man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfront/pseuds/waterfront
Summary: Scott is angry with the world until the day he isn't. 
Seth and Kate's relationship through the eyes of her younger, vengeful brother. Based on a prompt: Scott's journey to realizing and accepting that Seth and Kate are in love





	

Scott Fuller was sixteen years old when he became an orphan for the second time in his life.

Scott Fuller was sixteen when he became the freak every jock and every pretty girl said he was.

And his father— wait, scratch that— Jacob Fuller, the man who signed some random papers that claimed he was now owned by a different set of people, couldn’t live being the same sort of freak. Scott supposed it was hard, for someone who not only had been accepted by his community, but praised for being such a god-fearing man, to become such a monster. But for Scott, nah, at least now his pain had fangs, and claws, and the bloodlust for every asshole, every racist, every white kid who whispered about him now was given validation. At least now they had a real reason to stare, they had a reason to point at his _different_ face. His eyes _were_ monstrous. The scales on his skin _were_ yellow. They saw him as poison to their backwater town and now he was going to kill them with it.

When two bank robbers took what left he had of a family, he wished for nothing more than the power to stop them. To take back the thing they had stolen that was infinitely more precious than money or gold. The Gecko Brothers took his sense of safety. And shortly after that, in the moment he was given the power to be worthy of inheriting Jacob’s position as protector, the remaining Fullers stripped him from the family tree. So, in a way, the Gecko Brothers did that too. They cleaved off the fragile roots that occasionally blinded him into believing he might have been accepted as the Fuller son and brother.

So when Carlos Madrigal told him that Kate had decided to run off with Seth, he held it in. He held it in and remembered the bullies, the church-goers with their hooked noses, the countless store clerks and restaurant staff that turned their heads when he spoke. Five weeks after his life had fractured, Scott Fuller cried twice, in private of course. Once when he found Jacob Fuller’s body in the bowels of the temple, and again when Carlos told him Kate was running from motel room to motel room with Seth Gecko.

Scott hated Kate after that. Carlos responded silently to the boiling, seething hatred inside the body of the sixteen-year-old, finding almost a kindred spirit in the darkness of oily vengeance, and so he trained the boy with swords. Whenever the metal clashed, it was one consistent face Scott imagined ripping apart: Seth Gecko. It wasn’t Jacob’s, it wasn’t Jenny’s— he couldn’t even remember his birth parents faces— and it wasn’t even Kate, who rejected him after he bit Jacob. It was Seth fucking Gecko and the ugly hatred sloshed inside of him, like a cacophonic ocean storm, and Carlos watched it built with distant interest.

One night, a tribute had come in and Carlos let him choose the girl to whet his appetite. In the back rooms, previously used for dry humping and ten-dollar hand jobs, when Scott buried his face into the neck of a small brunette, her warm blood spattering his face, he vaguely wondered if the girl was suffering. He pulled back slowly. Her breathe was coming out ragged, her fingers twitching as life slowly drained from her body, but her eyes were closed. Scott’s stomach churned in hunger and pity. He bit down, harder than before, to hurry the process along and to quell the uprising of guilt and fear and misery threatening to ruin his bloodlust. He was miserable without Kate, but too angry and afraid to do anything about it. Oh how he _hated_ Seth Gecko.

When Carlos told him Kate was no longer with Seth, instead pairing with the Ranger and stumbling upon the same path he and his mentor were, towards the Blood Well, Scott’s anger tripped on itself. In that moment, with Carlos’s hand on his shoulder, his anger divided and dissolved. For Kate, he realized, it was never there. It had been easer, during those months of transition into the darkness, to claim that she was never his real family. That growing up inside the Fuller home hadn’t made him feel loved and whole. It was easier to pretend to pretend the grief wasn’t there and that small white picket fence around their home wasn’t the last bastion against a world that fear and loathed what was different. He couldn’t protect Kate from that world any more, and so he knew it was time to bring her into his world. She would go kicking and screaming, because she too didn’t know how to be different, but in time, he would teach her.

He would teach her that blood is what binds us, blood is the visible substance of the soul, and it wasn’t something to fear. He would teach her that killing was necessary. He would teach her that he was the only one that could truly protect her, the last creature on earth that loved her as only a family member could.

But for all of his new power, for all of his strength, for all of his acceptance for who he was, Scott Fuller couldn’t save his sister when it mattered most.

She died in his arms because he wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t kill the monster that made him and the girl he loved most in this world and the next died because he believed the Fuller siblings belonged in the dark. What was the point of possessing the qualities of a nightmare when everything else was temporary?

She cursed him in her final moments and goddamn it, he deserved it.

Scott Fuller was sixteen when he beheaded the man that killed his big sister. Would she have wanted such a bloody revenge? He’d never know and like a snake rousing from slumber, the old dark oily hatred returned. He watched Seth Gecko gasping for breath, his face and brow cut and bleeding, and Scott loathed him entirely. Richard Gecko with smeared glasses and a dark look on his face— Scott fucking hated him too. And of course, the Ranger, he hated for driving away and leaving his sister with no one but Seth fucking Gecko.

But most of all, he hated Seth.

When he was five, some big second grader pushed Scott into the mud, cutting up his hands and his cheek. As his mother, Jenny Fuller, cleaned him on the floor of the bathroom, through the tears, he asked why? Why would anyone do this? His mother replied, “sometimes there is just too much darkness in someone for the light to get through. And a leopard can’t change its spots.”

Scott always thought that saying was stupid because obviously, it’s an animal. It couldn’t change if it wanted to.

Bank robbers were terrible and cruel people who destroyed lives and did not have soft spots. Leopards could not change their spots. When the three boys drove out to the Blood Well, to collect the body of his sister, Scott saw something that stilled his unbearable grief simply because it was so astounding.

Seth Gecko looked devastated.

No, that was a tired word. Used too much by old church ladies who found out their daughters had eloped with the plumber. The look on Seth’s face as he stared at the blood-stained floorboards was beyond devastated. Scott had gotten a B- in English so there might have been a better word, but he really couldn’t think of it. Seth Gecko looked like his innards had been torn out, chopped up, and put on display.

But criminals couldn’t feel that deeply, right? They couldn’t understand what it was like to watch the person you love die in your arms and know you are solely responsible. They couldn’t understand because they couldn’t feel love like that, right? Definitely not, for _his_ dead sister, right?

How could it be possible that Seth Gecko could possibly be sharing in his swollen, drowning misery, as if he cared about Kate?

Suddenly, Seth knelt down and Scott’s head nearly fell off: was he praying? But a moment later, Seth stood again, this time with something gold in his hands. It was Kate’s cross. Never mind the agonizing question of where her body went, but the person that took her and left her cross. They didn’t know her at all.

The necklace swung slightly as it dangled from Seth’s closed fist, holding out towards Scott. The criminal wouldn’t meet the eyes of the seventeen-year-old freak.

               “Take it.” He said gruffly. “She would want you to have it.”

The grief was swelling within him and the thought of the cross haunting him nearly made him sick to his stomach. Scott jerked his head no.

               “I can’t. It’s too much of her. I can’t.”

Seth nodded, his own movements rocky as if he couldn’t remember how to move normally. Silently, he pocketed the cross and Scott didn’t stop him.

Scott and his former captor had bonded, however bizarrely unique, over a deep, aching grief for the death of Kate Fuller. Scott watched him stumble, almost drunkenly, back to the car. Richie came back over the ridge, his anguish and frustration plain on his face. He shook his head. _I don’t know who took her body._

Instead of following Seth to the car, Scott turned, took up what had been Carlos’s motorcycle, and drove into the dawning sun, without a word back.

 

Each night he mourned her and every morning, he wished her a good day. He went on, farther away from the dirt and dust, back into what he knew, that which was cities and people with full hearts. He found solace in his music and the knowledge that he could create a new family with his new power. He was at least strong enough for that. So he did and for a time, he was nearly happy with his band. With their vengeance against those who dared to call themselves human and preyed on the innocent. When they hunted, they hunted as a pack, as a family, as God’s avenging angels on Earth. Kate would have liked that, maybe. He no longer killed without focus, but each time he fed, he tried to remember his hatred for Seth Gecko, for once it had given him purpose in life. Now it just made him think of Kate.

Back in high school, he knew a guy named Steve McComb. Steve had a bad background, a list of petty crimes, and a father who could wind up and strike hard than a batter and a baseball. When Steve came to school one day with a black eye, he looked at Scott and said, “shit hit the fan.”

That was the best way to describe the following months after Kate, miraculously and horribly resurfaced. What came back was not Kate, not entirely. Scott’s guilt was having a field day, trying to make heads or tails of how exactly to feel seeing someone that was his sister and also not at all. However, it seemed for Seth, there was no conflict at all.

He raised his gun to her body in the junk yard and Scott felt his heart stop. He was going to kill her, despite what he had seen in the alleyway— Christ, it even smelled like her under the leather—

_Leopards can’t change their spots_.

Scott rushed forward because maybe if she was injured, Seth wouldn’t see her as such a threat. Maybe if she was subdued, he’d have mercy. Maybe, because of his feelings greater than devastation, because of that moment of silence at the Blood Well, maybe Seth wouldn’t shoot. Scott drove his sword through the body of his sister and heard her cry out in pain.

What’s a word stronger than panic?

Seth Gecko deliberately hesitated and Scott saw stifled hope rush into the eyes of a killer. Kate Fuller’s choked, strangled voice, coming from her bleeding body, was begging Seth to kill her. Over her bent shoulder, Seth’s eyes met his and the unbridled terror in Seth’s eyes of who to believe wracked Scott to the bone. In that moment, Scott realized Seth had truly convinced himself Kate Fuller was, and this thing parading around in her body was nothing more than a parasite, dishonoring her memory as it did terrible things with her hands.

Two things occurred at the same time: Scott wondered if this unwavering commitment to her death was easier to accept than this deranged alternative, and Seth Gecko stumbled forward into the arms of a painful death. He tried calling out, but the creature had taken hold of the Gecko boy and was sucking him dry.

They had gotten away because Scott acted and saved the life of the man that had ruined his entire existence. As they sped away into the darkness on the back of Freddie’s truck, Seth curled up in agony beside him, Scott watched the red hair fade into the shadows and he wondered if he too used his hatred to carry the weight of his continuous grief. He also supremely doubted he’d ever get a thank you from the nearly unconscious man next to him, but the vice grip of hatred had lessened. He now hated this hell bitch who called herself Amaru and took up space inside of his sister.

As he had months ago, he took his anger, as blinding and white hot as ever, and forged it into a weapon. When he fought, he fought for life. He no longer sought out contentment, he sought revenge. He sought blood and fire and unholy retribution, raining down on Amaru’s soldiers like bolts of lightning from heaven.

He had yet to get a thank you from Seth Gecko for saving his life, but all things considered, perhaps now was not the time to be ungrateful.

Could leopards change its spots?

The Gecko Boys sought out their own blood, their own pound of flesh. Every day was a step towards stopping Amaru. Sure, the fate of the world was in balance, but they fought with their teeth and bones against an army of quite literal hellspawn.

Even Seth. Especially Seth. Kate had been the only human in a nest of vampires and now Seth Gecko was vulnerable.

When Seth Gecko rushed into the rickety church in Matzanas, Texas, vulnerability had consumed him. For Kate. By the sight of Kate, lying on the floor, her pale head resting in his lap. Scott swore this time it would be different. She would die peacefully and that maybe, just maybe, his soul would rest too. Maybe after all this, he would join his family in whatever constituted as the afterlife. He never even got the chance to ask her if she saw heaven. But Seth Gecko had other plans. He barked and he snapped and he was determined to ruin Kate’s gradual reaping from this world and make it as bloody as possible. Scott remembered hating him, remembered that rising smoke and ash, but Seth Gecko was frantic and demanding and Scott suddenly wished he had more fight left in him.

There was something knocking in his brain as he watched Seth’s blood flood through the plastic cord into his sister’s arm. Something familiar. Something that made him feel small, that he was watching a play go on that he was never meant to witness.

Kate opened her eyes and the relived breath that was trapped in Scott’s chest fell from Seth’s lips, and Scott hated him for saving his sister. Saving her, because it should have been her brother, her protector, it should have been the one who really loved—

When they helped her to her feet, a small part of his brain told him he should have been checking on Kate, but he was transfixed. They pulled Kate to her feet and Seth looked strung out, addicted to the hope they had all been carrying. Scott couldn’t look away. A building realization was struggling to form in his head and in that moment, he was steadily convincing himself it was the guilt of being a lifetime criminal that had contorted Seth’s face in such a way.

Now wasn’t the right time to be shuffling through memories of their every interaction, but he couldn’t help it.

What was a word stronger than devastated?

No.

That couldn’t be right.

A leopard can’t change his spots. Not even for—

In the tunnels, they argued and once again Scott felt pressured to look away. To not look at the tragedy unfolding. What was it his English teacher said, about tragedy? It was all-laid out in some grand plan that no human could ever change. It was comforting, the teacher said, because all you had to do was act out things according to plan and in the end, your fate was decided. There was peace in that.

What was fated for him, then? Was he always meant to end up here? Was she? Was she meant to be standing in black leather, a hole in her arm, and Seth Gecko was looking at her light she lit up the sky—

Scott shook his head and inched further down the tunnel.

Fate had to be kinder to Kate Fuller than that.

Life after death had to be better than fighting for her life in the bowels of the earth. And surprisingly, Seth seemed to agree. He wanted to hate Seth for that, because that had become a comforting reflex. It made him sharp instead of vulnerable because that’s what got his family dead in the first place. It was also what had pushed Kate away in the first place. But hating was easier.

Hate was easier to salvage than love.

And what did Kate salvage after six months of being a prisoner in her own body?

Scott struggled against the Queen of Hell’s coils and watched his sister walk towards the mouth of hell, in full capacity of her own mind, body, and soul. For the countless time, Seth Gecko raised his gun to Kate’s head, only this time—

What was a word greater than pitiful?

What was an action greater than pleading?

Begging?

As a prisoner, Kate held onto three things it seemed: her own hated and anguish for what the world had done to her, memories of her brother, and Seth Gecko.

So much so, that she put _him_ in her circle of the people she loved.

So much so, that with the gate to hell closed, she said everything changed. Scott watched her walk away and wondered if he should hate Seth for that too.

 

It was months later. He had gone back to sell their home in Bethel. She sent postcards from travels, he watched her over Instagram, and when they could, they had dinner and chatted about old times.

 

Three months before her twenty-first, some old faces resurfaced on her posts. Scott hesitated and liked them. Most of them were blurred, some were clear— of Maggie, or Billy, or Richie’s glasses— but the darker ones had wide hands covering the lens. Another one was just the back of a dark head, mussed in bed sheets.

_Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man—less grumpy_. _So they say_.

That was her only caption.

Scott ate alone that night, in an apartment in Austin, and watched the sun come up. He thought about his sister, and the man who looked at her like she hung the moon, and searched around in his heart for hate, but found none. Maybe it was a sign he was getting old. Mature. Scott snickered into his beer that his roommate bought for him and drank half of it in one gulp.

It was Christmas and Scott let it pass when Kate called him and invited him to the compound in West Texas to celebrate.

               “Did you hear me, Scott? Christmas in Texas, just like old times!”

Had he gone soft? Where was that hatred now, that protected him like an internal spear?

               “Yeah, Kate. Out at the Gecko Brother’s place, right?”

Her silence was more precarious than his.

               “That’s right.”

What did he really expect to find?

It was Christmas when he pulled up to the compound he had been imprisoned in almost more than a year ago. He turned off the bike, heard a door clatter, and was knocked off his feet by his tiny sister.

To his great surprise, Richie greeted him without a condescending smirk. They exchanged hands, and on the brink of respect, Richie begrudgingly asked about his music. Scott remembered a gun to his head, a shitty little pool to his left and Richard Gecko explaining how a gun worked. He remembered anger and considered unearthing it again, but found it to be too much work. Richie offered him a glass of whiskey and Scott accepted.

What simmered in his chest next wasn’t anger, but perhaps sadness.

Kate and Seth wandered into the room, Kate laughing over her shoulder and Seth looking satisfied he had successfully told a joke.

Everything _had_ changed.

Scott wasn’t exactly sure when it had.

They were alone, for the first time in what felt like years, when it was time to set the table. Her hair kept falling in front of her eyes. It was brown again. She leaned forward to put the napkins down, and without really knowing why, Scott grabbed her wrist. Her big eyes swiveled up to him and the memory of his eighth birthday when she accidently set fire to the living room rug and she was caught surfaced.

               “What’s going on between you and Seth?”

She froze and Scott heard her heartbeat pump erratically.

               “Shit, I really hoped we could have gotten through dinner.”

The Fuller siblings glanced, like mirrors, towards the door frame. Seth stood there, in a remarkably clean suit and tie, his hands holding two bottles of champagne.

Kate exchanged a glance with Seth that made Scott feel very far away and disconnected. Like there was a world of information that he was not privy to, and it had been that way for a very long time. Seth sighed and put the bottles on the table.

               “Kate, I want to talk to your brother. Alone.”

Scott never liked distance and sure, he could have been more involved, asked more questions, followed up about the Instagram photos. But he was never quite sure if he wanted an answer. And now the question was blaring in his face and for the first time in years, the grinding anger in his gut unfurled.

Kate’s eyebrow jumped, surprised. As if something about this was unexpected. As if they meant to face him together. Against him. Scott snatched up a bottle and poured his glass full of champagne. He thought of his parent’s months before his mother’s accident and the secrets and the lies and felt another oncoming train crash.

He didn’t hate Seth, but a supreme dislike flicked its tongue. Kate glanced once more at Seth before nodding quickly and exiting out the side door.

A familiar weight fell on his shoulders and he wondered if Seth felt the same kindred grief at the blood well. Is that what was making this terribly difficult?

Seth sighed, ran a hand over his hair and helped himself to a glass. He drank it all in one gulp. He gestured to the table with a wave of his hand.

               “Maybe we should sit down—,”

               “How long have you been fucking my sister?”

               “Jesus Christ, Scott—,” Seth slumped into the seat closest to him and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the palm of his hand. “It’s not like that.”

Scott’s words were filled with more malice than he felt in his heart for Seth Gecko, but he couldn’t help it. There was a part of Kate’s life he had been removed from, kept in the dark about. And it involved a known criminal.

Was this Fate being cruel or kind?

Scott slowly sat down into the seat next to Seth, the glass cold in his hand. He poured himself another glass and considered drinking it, but in the end, something stopped him. The anger in his gut was rolling, flickering, bobbing down, and it was amusing because Seth Gecko was sweating nervous for a reason Scott couldn’t begin to fathom. But he knew it began and ended with his sister and that was important. So Scott leaned back, looked at the man whom he had hated and waited, for an answer in a world that never waited for him to ask a question.

Seth drank another half glass.

               “I’m not fucking your sister. I mean—,” Seth shuddered and rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve been together for a year. She’s been living here for six months now.”

Was this power? Was this strength? Holding a man’s fate in his hands? Holding his happiness? If Scott said no, would Seth walk away?

               “Do you love her?”

The question was out of his mouth before his brain could pump the breaks. It had been there the moment Seth stood in the door way, but only a jumble of incoherent feelings, worries, and thoughts. Now it was out in the open.

And to Scott’s great surprise, Seth looked relieved.

               “Yeah, man,” he chuckled, a wide grin pulling at his lips, and twisted the glass in his hand. “I love the hell out of her.”

The anger rolled, crumbling into ash for the last time. “Does she love you?”

Seth lifted his gaze, less fear in his eyes and more trepidation. “She sure says she does.”

Scott nodded and bit the corner of his lip. He steadily took a sip of the champagne, considering. “You do realize if you hurt her, I’ll set you on fire and slowly rip out every single one of your toe nails.”

Seth coughed from his chest and nodded. “Graphic, but fair.”

Scott crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes. “So what gives? I think you know Amaru ain’t got shit on what I would do to you if you fuck her over. Why the sweats?”

               “I’m not sweating—,” Seth growled but stilled, and pulled on his collar. He adjusted himself in his seat. “Look, it’s not just this secret is now out in the open, but there’s something else.”

Scott leaned back, and tried to think of a word stronger than love. Because that’s what this all was, wasn’t it? It was Seth being so madly in love with Kate, perhaps from the beginning, he was vulnerable. It was Kate forgiving Seth, it was about love conquering all.

The robber and the preacher’s daughter. Maybe it was just Fate having a good ol’ laugh at them all, but this time Scott was in on the joke.

This is what was left when anger gave way to forgiveness.

               “Scott, I want to—,”

               “I know.”

               “You do? What?”

               “I give you my blessing.” Scott threw back the rest of the champagne like it was hard liquor and sighed, some old coil finally shuffling off. “Marry her.”

 

Scott Fuller was twenty-one at the wedding ceremony and only drank half the bar because he could legally and he was crying happy tears when Kate helped him to bed.

               “He really fucking loves you, you know?” Scott muttered, his eyes in half slits, as he watched his sister slid off his shoes in her wedding gown.

Kate smirked and tossed one shoe and then the other to the floor. “I should hope so. We kind of made it a forever thing.”

               “No. Kate. He really loves you. Like Mom and Dad kind of love.”

Kate stilled and looked at her brother, wondering how much of him was coherent. The lights were low and she was glowing. She looked like a goddamn princess and Scott wondered how the world had put them here.

               “Do you believe in fate, Kate?”

With the rustle of her dress, she leaned down and kissed her brother’s forehead. “Of course, I do, Scott. It’s kept us together.”

Scott thought of something funny, something about martial beds, but he forgot before the words formed in his mouth. He rolled over and sighed. “Love can change cat spots, Katie. I didn’t know that but I think it’s true.”

               “What was that?”

But he was already sound asleep.

 

Scott Fuller was twenty-three when he became an uncle to a small girl with dark eyes and his big sister’s nose.

Scott Fuller was a lot of things in his life, and peaceful was one of them.

 

              

**Author's Note:**

> oh man i had so much fun with this, because surprisingly, i too was an angry, bitter teenager. I of course wasn't orphaned and turned into a snake vampire by the age of sixteen but still, i was real salty. i love scott and his fight. i tried to focus on that. thanks so much for the prompt whoever it was!


End file.
